I HAVE today asked the Congress to help chart a new course for American foreign aid. We know that aid is indispensable to our quest for world order. We know that poverty is the enemy of peace and hopelessness is the mother of violence. But the world is changed since our aid began, some 20 years ago. And our thinking should change with it.
Our primary objective must be to help those nations which are willing to help themselves.
I will not ask a single American citizen to contribute his tax dollars to support any country which does not meet this test, because no sustained progress is possible without the spirit of self-help.
Aid provided as a substitute is aid that is wasted. And waste is a luxury that none of us can afford.
Note: The President recorded the statement for radio and television broadcast. It was not made public in the form of a White House press release.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President on the Foreign Aid Message. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238524